The local journalism problem
We launch next week - here's what to expect
The Kent Current will fully launch next week, but I wanted to write now to tell you a little about who we are, what we do, and why we think it matters.
The problem
News is something that we all take for granted. It’s something that most of us accept has to exist, but in recent years, it has become increasingly difficult to make sustainable. Newspaper sales have collapsed, broadcast news has fragmented, and online news has faced a new problem: How to fund journalism in a world where everything can be accessed online for free.
As a result, news websites, particularly local ones, have become largely unreadable, usually bombarding you with ads and intrusive pop-ups. That feels like something that would achieve the opposite of the desired effect: Do I want to bother navigating around a website where the experience is so aggressively unpleasant?
When I set up Local Authority to cover the Medway Towns in 2021, it was effectively a pandemic side project born from frustration with the state of local news in Medway. Gone are the days of multiple newspapers and in-depth reporting on the issues that matter. The one newspaper that does remain is reduced to largely regurgitating press releases or surface-level reporting. Neither Kent-wide news website offers the kind of in-depth reporting we deserve, with one looking to make further redundancies from what is already a barebones operation. None of this is to criticise the journalists working for these outlets. They are doing the best they can with the limited resources they have. The existing model is broken.
I have been inspired by new outlets like The Mill in Manchester, which is charting its own course and delivering high-quality local journalism on the gamble that readers would be willing to pay for it. Since then, we have seen an explosion in such publications, from Jim Waterson’s excellent London Centric and Michael MacLeod’s superb Edinburgh Minute to great work being done by the Northamptonshire-focused NN Journal and The Ink over in Swindon. All are finding new ways to serve their communities, and if the work is good enough, it can find an audience that will make it sustainable.
What we do differently
Our weekly news briefings are freely available to all via email or on the web. They contain no ads and offer a clean reading experience, particularly in your inbox. This might seem counterproductive in a world where news websites are loading themselves with more and more junk. Still, we believe presenting readers with a better experience makes them more likely to engage with our journalism.
The counterbalance to this is that we place some additional content behind a paywall. Our core news reporting is free, but those willing and able to support us can go a little deeper: They receive our interviews with prominent figures, our in-depth reports, our live coverage of things like council meetings, and more.
Four years on, I’m delighted that the model appears to be working. Thousands of readers receive our Medway edition in their inboxes every week, and hundreds support it by becoming paid supporters. This allows us to investigate what matters and explore issues that others aren’t covering.
We pride ourselves on a quality over quantity approach. While other local news providers might breathlessly report on a road being closed for a couple of hours or a new shop opening, we prefer to lean into the bigger issues.
Over the past year or so in Medway, we have broken the news on a councillor using anonymous social media accounts to push political points, Medway Council seeking exceptional financial powers to survive the year, plans for a new pier in Rochester, Medway receiving hundreds of thousands of pounds of ‘northern’ transport funding, postal votes failing to turn up, Medway Council’s plans to sell 30 sites, how Medway’s red route cameras aren’t catching anyone, revealed an ongoing dispute between Medway Council and one of our most prominent charities, a literature festival being challenged by an LGBT+ group, and hundreds more stories.
We’ve put ourselves in the middle of Medway’s far-right protest, examined the ‘Down from London’ myth, met a barber doing extraordinary things for men’s mental health, looked at how polluted the River Medway is, figured out that crime is falling, asked how a prominent building in Chatham has been allowed to slowly fall apart, talked to a theatre under threat from development, and lots more.
We’ve produced in-depth interviews with figures as diverse as legendary Medway artist and musician Billy Childish, Gillingham and Rainham MP Naushabah Khan, atomic archaeologist Vicky Robinson, Medway Hospital Hero Emily Brown, Chatham Historic Dockyard Chief Executive Richard Morseley, legendary Medway band The Singing Loins, Kent’s first Local Democracy Reporter Caitlin Webb, and loads more.
In the real world, we held hustings for each of the three Medway constituencies ahead of the General Election, with over 500 people coming to hear the candidates debate. A few months earlier, we held Medway’s only debate for the Kent Police and Crime Commissioner election, with all candidates participating.
I realise this is all self-aggrandising, but we are proud of our accomplishments. In July, we were nominated for Kent News Website of the Year at the Kent Press and Broadcast Awards, while I won ‘highly commended’ Kent Print & Online Journalist of the Year. In September, we were mentioned in The I newspaper as one of the publications transforming local news. In October, I got to speak at Goldsmiths, University of London, about our work. Recently, we went on the journalism.co.uk podcast to talk about the launch of the Kent Current.
The future
After four years of developing our model in Medway, we are eager to expand it to cover the wider county of Kent.
The Kent Current will follow the same structure as our Medway title. To start, we’ll be publishing two to three pieces each week, with a weekly news briefing at the core, as well as additional long-reads, interviews, as well as our art and culture editions.
We are launching a time when Kent is going through a period of significant change. Kent County Council elections are coming up in May, where, to be frank, no one has much idea what is going to happen. The moves toward devolution and local government reorganisation are underway, reshaping our county's political geography. Eventually, this will likely lead to the abolition of Kent County Council and the introduction of an elected mayor with strategic power across the region. eventually leading to an elected mayor with strategic power across the county. We intend to follow and report on this process as it happens and be one of the media outlets holding that eventual leader to account.
But it’s about so much more. Kent is full of fascinating people doing interesting things, and we want to tell their stories. We want to paint an honest picture of life in our county, with the good, bad, and everything in between.
The awkward bit
Given the model I set out above, you can probably guess where this is going.
As exciting as all of this is for us, the cold, hard reality is that doing this kind of work is difficult. We are getting this project off the ground with very little resources. This means we have no meaningful marketing budget, nor is anyone working on this being paid very much for their efforts. We have big ambitions for this project, but the reality is that it might not last very long if people aren’t willing to support it.
That’s why I’m asking you to consider pledging to become a paid supporter of the Kent Current. I know this is a big ask, and if you’d rather read our free editions for a while before deciding whether to support our work, that’s completely understandable. If you do decide to pledge, you won’t be charged until we begin publishing in earnest next week.
If you’d like to receive our full reporting but can’t currently pay for it, just reply to this edition and let me know, and I’ll give you access for free, no questions asked. We don’t want to exclude anyone from our journalism if the only barrier is a lack of funds.
If you’d like to help us in another way, please share the Kent Current anywhere there are Kent residents, like local Facebook or WhatsApp groups, or tell a friend directly about it. As mentioned above, we have no real marketing budget, so any help in getting the word out helps us so much.
Thank you so much for reading if you’ve made it this far. We can’t wait to get started.
Ed Jennings
Editor, Kent Current
PS. We’re working on some big Kent stories for our early editions, but if you’ve got any news, tips, or gossip you think we should know about, you can reach us via hello AT kentcurrent DOT news. We’re always happy to speak off the record in the first instance.
